


like the ceiling can't hold us

by torigates



Category: Divergent Series - Veronica Roth
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-25
Updated: 2013-04-25
Packaged: 2017-12-09 10:48:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/773340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torigates/pseuds/torigates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three generations of Prior women</p>
            </blockquote>





	like the ceiling can't hold us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angelette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelette/gifts).



0\. 

 

Amanda Ritter is a selfish person. She is not kind. She is a coward and a liar, but Amanda is smart. She knows there are things coming that have to be done. She knows that she will have to be the person to do many of these things. She will have to make difficult choices, and she will have to carry them out. 

The greater good. It’s a topic about which there have been many conversations. Amanda feels strongly that _this_ is for the greater good. And yet, and yet, she knows her motivations are entirely self driven. She wants to help. She believes she _can_ help, but more than that she wants some relief. She wants to rest.

She is many things, but ultimately, she is selfish. When they come to her with the sterilized needle full of the serum that will help her forget--she does not say _make_ her forget, because Amanda is all too ready and willing to forget. Things that she has seen and done, and brought about with her own two hands--she takes it with steady fingers, and plunges the serum deep into her own neck. 

She does not hesitate. She does not flinch. 

 

1\. 

 

Later, many, many years later (a lifetime later) Natalie watches the video feed with a dawning horror, and wonders how she can go home to her children and her life after this. After her entire life has been turned upside down and shaken until it is no longer recognizable. 

_Prior_ , the woman says. But the name had been nothing more than a confirmation of that which she had already known as soon as the feed began playing. 

The woman standing in front of her is almost unrecognizable--a fact that has nothing to do with the infrequency with which she looks in mirrors, and the Abnegation tradition of not keeping photographs. No, the stranger in front of her is many things that Natalie hoped deep down inside that she would never be. The stranger in front of her is everything that, in her own heart, Natalie knew herself capable to be. 

She cannot remember speaking those awful words, or seeing those awful images before now, and why would she? But there is a knowledge that lives in her DNA, and a truth she has passed on through herself to her children. There is a ghost of a memory that haunts her, the feel of the serum in her neck that she had always assumed came from her time in Dauntless. 

Dauntless is a lie. It never existed. 

The ink on her ribs feels heavy. 

 

\- 

 

Natalie’s hands shake after the aptitude test. _Divergent_ , the instructor had whispered, gripping her hands tightly. 

“You won’t be safe here, Natalie,” her mother said. Her lips were thin and white with tension. A stark contrast against the black of her clothes, the ink on her clavicle. 

On the choosing day her stomach is in knots, and her hands feel like ice. When she cuts her palm with the knife, the hilt is still warm from the boy who went ahead of her. He smirked as he sprinkled his blood over the Dauntless embers, and Natalie knew there was power in her mother’s words. 

_Divergent_

 

\- 

 

She meets Andrew their first day of initiation. He has dark, serious eyes, and a burning passion to do the right thing. 

It isn’t until much, much later that she realises that doing the right thing and being selfless aren’t always the same. 

 

-

 

Courting within the Abnegation is quiet and beautiful, Natalie thinks. Andrew holds her hand, and helps her with her duties, and brings her small tokens of his affections. 

The first time he kisses her, he cups her chin in one of his large, strong hands and presses his lips so gently and softly against her own. She wraps her thin fingers around his wrist, and thinks about the brash, reckless way of the Dauntless--her family. 

He opens his mouth against hers, and the swoop in her stomach is just the same as the first time she jumped off a building, not knowing what was going to be on the bottom.

 

-

 

Caleb and Beatrice come so quickly together, she and Andrew hadn’t planned it. After Caleb was born, she had been insatiable.

Andrew held her down, ate her out, and pressed his fingers and his cock deep into her flesh. When he came inside her, his hand clamped down over her tattoo, like he could erase that part of her, or pretend it wasn’t there. 

When they were done, she pried his fingers off her ribs and checked to make sure the ink was still there. That harsh contrast of black on white. 

 

\- 

 

Natalie cuts Beatrice’s hair in neat strokes around her shoulders, and braids it in a line down her back. 

Her daughter in unhappy, and unsatisfied with the Abnegation lifestyle. Natalie wants to talk to her about these things. She wants to tell Beatrice that it is alright to be more than one thing. To be more--or less--than merely selfless. She wants to talk to her daughter openly and honestly, but Abnegation is not Candor, and there is a fear deep within Natalie that keeps her from speaking out. 

There are no guns in the Abnegation headquarters, but after the Choosing, their house feels empty and cold, and the world seems somehow more dangerous. She longs for the feel of heavy steel in the palm of her hand. She longs for ignorance, and for peace. She knows she can have neither. 

Andrew paces around the kitchen, the lines of his shoulders are tense and angry. She wonders, perhaps, neither of them were meant for Abnegation. She knows no one can be completely selfless. 

She tries to believe her children will be safe, knows they will not. 

Finally, she holds out her hand and leads Andrew to bed. 

The house is quiet around them. 

 

-

 

Long before the choosing, Natalie knew she was going to lose both her children. 

They both tried. She watched the way they tried to be selfless, the way they tried to please her, never knowing, not understanding that she would be pleased--she loved them--no matter what their choice. 

When she sees Amanda Ritter on the screen, she knows with more certainty than ever--she will lose her children. 

Amanda’s words echo those she had heard many more times before and since. Whispers, always whispers.

A threat. 

_Divergent_. 

 

2\. 

 

_“My name will be Edith Prior,” she says. “And there is much I am happy to forget.”_

__Prior _._

_And then the shouting begins._

 

\- 

 

Tris knows better than most the way that words hold power. 

Abnegation. Amity. Candor. Erudite. Dauntless. 

Divergent. 

Insurgent. 

These words have held power over her. They have shaped her and made her who she is, but they all fall second to her name.

Beatrice. Tris. _Prior_. 

Who is she? Who is that woman? 

Tris can see the video playing over and over again in her mind, though the video screen has long since gone black. “There is much I am happy to forget,” she said. 

It isn’t fair. It’s not fair, because Tris can’t forget. She can’t forget any of it, as much as she may want to, crave to. She cannot. She wonders what would have happened had she never chosen Dauntless. Would they still all be here? Would she had died alongside many of her former faction members? Would someone else have taken up the mantle she never wanted, and never asked for? 

It doesn’t matter now, and she supposes it never really did. Tris _did_ choose Dauntless, and she made every other choice that led her here to this moment. 

More importantly, despite the warnings of Jeanine, Marcus, her parents--this is knowledge worth protecting, worth _dying_ for--there is still so much that she does not understand. There is still so much that she must understand. 

_Prior_. 

“My name will be Edith Prior,” the woman says.

Tris wonders how much of a choice she ever really had.


End file.
